Hello, my lovely blog subscribers. As always I just want you to know how thankful I am for every single one of you who reads, comments, and subscribes to my blog. I am so blown away by the amount of support I have received since I began my World Race journey, and I am forever grateful. Unfortunately, I have a bit of bad news. Since the beginning of my race I have had a lot of issues regarding my health. Every other week I was back at the doctors getting checked out for various things, parasites, bacterial infections, salmonella, etc. Things that aren’t foreign to the mission field and definitely aren’t foreign to Gap W. These things used to terrify me and now are something we all joke about, “Oh, Makayla, ANOTHER parasite? What’d you name this one?” It became part of our normal vocabulary. I truly thought it was something I had to get through, but it did become a regular thing. I just kept getting sick. This past Tuesday I was feeling especially bad, worse than usual. So, I went to the doctor, and was given some antibiotics to try and fight it off. Our squad would be traveling to our second country, Ethiopia, in a few days and I was just praying that I would be better by travel day. The medicine wasn’t helping and I kept feeling worse. I knew before we flew to Africa, we would have a layover in New Jersey for twenty-two hours. We scheduled a doctor’s visit with a specialist in Jersey, just to see if the continual illness could be stopped. After a very thorough check up, the doctor decided that for my own safety, that I not travel to Ethiopia with the rest of the squad at this time. He recommended I fly home, and get a full check up with labs just to ensure that I am as healthy as I can be.
Whoa, what did she just say? She’s leaving the race??? Is this for real? I know, I know, not what you expected. Honestly, not what I expected… The only one who did expect it was God, Amen am I right? Thankfully He so divinely orchestrated the whole day, so much so that my mom was able to fly to New Jersey to be with me the whole time (all thanks to her amazing friends who paid for the whole thing. Ladies, I am so incredibly thankful for everything you did. Your generosity blows my mind and I can never thank you enough.)
So, what does this mean for the rest of the time I was to be on the race? Let me be the first to reassure you that it is one hundred percent my intention to return to the field at the earliest possible moment. I do not plan on letting this take me out for good. The current plan is to figure out what is wrong, and have a speedy recovery (in Jesus name.) I am currently feeling okay, all things considered, but with the history of illness I have had overseas we just want to make sure I can get the proper care so I don’t get worse.
At the end of all of it I have so much peace that God is so in this. He always is, but I can feel Him so clearly outlining the path that I am on. He is so good and I know He has my best interests in mind. Since the beginning of me posting blogs I have always said that I want to be as open and vulnerable with my readers as I possibly can, so if you have any questions please reach out and ask them. It all happened so very fast and I can’t stress how weird the whole situation is. I mean, yesterday I woke up believing I was moving to Africa in a few hours, and this morning I woke up in my own bed. It’s a really confusing thing and I won’t pretend to believe I know God’s plan, but I know it’s going to be good and He is so much bigger than any stomach issues and health problems. God isn’t done with me because I got sick and He didn’t see it coming. This has always been a part of His plan and I trust that He knows better than I do. All I can ask of you is to continue to pray that we can figure out what is wrong so I can return to the field and finish the race marked out for me. I promise to keep everyone updated as soon as we get some answers. I also want to ask for prayer for my squad. They are about to enter into Africa with little contact to their families. It’ll be a hard season and I know you can never have too many people praying for you. Thank you so much for your support and please let me know if you have any questions.
